Tag: prolific

First there was the small matter of waking up just the tiniest bit hungover, thanks to an evening out with Mayanna at Bernie's Southern Bistro. Everyone who lives in the city of Portland and many who don't have been to Bernie's, but I had never been until last night. The food was grand, and so was the barfly company. Fun night. But not conducive to being at my sharpest this morning.

Then I had to run to the grocery store for ingredients to make gooey banana bread with chocolate chips and coconut in it for my writing group's Christmas party tonight. Then I had to have lunch with my son at Cadillac Cafe. Then I had to come home and actually make the banana bread. And now it is after four, getting dark enough to turn the outside Christmas lights on, and I've not written my promised blog post.

So, here's the deal: today I'm going to write briefly about the four kinds of journal writing I like to practice, as a sort of preview and then go into them more throughly in the next couple of posts. Okay? Okay. Here we go:

Morning Pages. Popularized by Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way, morning pages are just that–3 pages of writing, done first thing in the morning.

Whiny Emotional Outbursts. Often occurring in morning pages, whiny emotional outbursts are why I don't have therapy bills–because it all goes on the page.

Day Planning. Obsessing on paper about all the things I need to get done, and figuring out a plan to accomplish them.

Chronology. My current favorite, the chronology is actually writing about what happened in my life the day before. The kind of things that people used to write letters about, when we wrote letters.

So there you have it, a wee preview of what I'm going to be writing about again soon. Maybe even tomorrow, but I'm not promising anything, as I do have another social event at which wine will be served tonight.

If you want to read the first two posts on journal writing, here they are: